The Stud Award – An Ode to Military Humor

If you have read some of my most recent posts, you know that I have been writing about my experiences after leaving the Logistics Executive Development Course at Fort Lee, Virginia.  Well, I graduated from the Logistics Executive Development Course in due course, and my family and I headed for Fort Huachuca, Arizona.  Thus, I am left the Logistics Executive Development Course and Fort Lee, Virginia, behind.  If you want to know more about those subjects, you will just have to go back and revisit the posts on those subjects.  If you have been reading my most recent posts about my adventures after moving to Arizona, you found out what happened when I initially signed in at Fort Huachuca, Arizona.  I subsequently revealed to you that I had been assigned to the Joint Interoperability Test Center (JITC) at Fort Huachuca.  JITC is a subordinate command of the Defense Information Systems Agency.  You may have read about an interesting situation with a temporary guard.  In that same post, I also talked about securing housing for my family.  That secured post housing and how spiders rained from the ceilings.  Oh yeah.  That was quite entertaining.  Not.  I then switched gears to talk about some of my volunteer work on Fort Huachuca.  Oh yeah.  That was quite fun and interesting too.  I was volunteered by my unit to be a tax officer to help soldiers and their families prepare their taxes.  Yay.  I discussed how I helped my Master Gunnery Sergeant and his dependapotamus spouse prepare their personal income taxes.  I talked about where my quarters were located on Fort Huachuca and how I was introduced to the local chapter of the Hash House Harriers.  I talked about an incident that happened soon after I assumed my tour of duty at the Joint Interoperability Test Center (JITC) at Fort Huachuca.  This particular incident occurred one Monday morning soon after I arrived at work.  For more on that particular incident and my first NCOIC, Master Gunnery Sergeant Orr, please visit that post.  In still another of my most recent posts, I wrote about my efforts to secure a farewell award for my NCOIC, Master Gunnery Sergeant Orr.  I wrote in that post that there would be two farewell posts about Master Gunnery Sergeant Orr.  Well, since the first post was about his farewell award, obviously, my most recent post had to be about his actual farewell and his plans after life in the military.   In a recent post, I talked about a strange spectacle that I beheld as I arrived for work one morning.  However, in my most recent posts, I shifted gears and talked about a couple natural phenomena that occur at Fort Huachuca during the summer months.  I talked about the wind in one and I talked about the phenomenon for which the Huachuca Mountains and Fort Huachuca are named in the other.  Previously, I mentioned that the summer thunderstorms that gave the Huachuca Mountains their name are loosely referred to as monsoons.  Oh yeah.  Along with the thunder and lightning, occasionally there is rain.  Sometimes, there is a lot of rain.  When there is a lot of rain, there is another naturally occurring event known as flash floods.  The flash floods come without warning to fill the dry washes and creek beds that haven’t held any water since the last flash flood.  Dry washes and creek beds look like canyons on the desert floor, except they’re not that deep.  Washes are filled with brush and cactus and also sand and rocks.  Occasionally, those dry washes are also filled with Hash House Harriers out on a Saturday run.  I believe I mentioned earlier that Fort Huachuca and Sierra Vista had a local chapter of the Hash House Harriers.  They were known as, wait for it, wait for it: the Huachuca Hash House Harriers.  Go figure.  Naturally, since I was a Hash House Harrier introduced to the local chapter in true form, I took my kids with me to every Hash House Harrier run without fail.  Even on those days in the middle of the summer when we were sure to get some rain from the monsoons or thunderstorms, if you prefer.  See, the Hash House Harriers started their runs at 8:00 AM in the summer so they were usually over by around 11:30 AM or noon.  That meant they usually generally always avoided the rain, not to mention the thunder and the lightning.  Remember that I mentioned that Hash House Harriers like to frequent washes while running their trails.  Cuz occasionally the monsoons don’t follow their prescribed schedule.  Not that they have a prescribed schedule.  But a lot of people down in that area of the country like to think they do.  In fact, they scheduled their whole damn day and their whole damn week around those scheduled monsoons.  But that’s the funny thing about weather.  You cannot predict exactly when it’s going to change or when you’re going to have some (weather that is).  You can get into the ballpark with your predictions and your prognostications, but good old mother nature has a tendency to do whatever it damn well pleases whenever it damn well pleases.  So sometimes those monsoons that are typically scheduled to hit in the afternoon, yeah, they up and decide that they’re going to show up early.  Oops.  How the hell did that happen?  On one rare occasion when the Hash House Harriers were out on one of their runs, the monsoon rains came early.  Pretty soon, those bone dry washes started filling with water from flash floods.  The Hash House Harriers nearly got caught in one wash due to flash flooding, but they were saved by a natural barrier of concrete that somebody had dumped into the wash.  That natural barrier of concrete allowed the Harriers time to climb out of the wash onto high ground.  However, the concrete became exceedingly slippery and treacherous in the falling rain.  Several Harriers (including me) slipped on the concrete. As a result my left leg was gashed on a piece of exposed rebar and badly injured, when I slipped on the concrete.  I was bleeding profusely from my wound.  All of the Harriers looked around for any piece of clean cloth to bandage my wound and try to stop the bleeding with no luck.  Then, one female Harrier disappeared behind some Mesquite trees and cactus and returned soon holding what appeared to be a bundle of clean cloth in her hands.  It turned out to be her underwear.  She graciously volunteered to donate her underwear to be used as a bandage for my wound.  Later at the Hash House down-down ceremony (the ceremony where deserving hashers are honored for devious exploits while out on the trail).  I was somehow awarded the “Stud” award, which is represented by a nicely polished hunk of wood (namely a 2×4 about 3 feet long with a sling attached) because it seems that I seemingly talked a lady out of her underwear while out on a run.  That of course got a bunch of near unanimous chants from the Hash House Harriers of “Say it ain’t so!”  Obviously, I was railroaded into carrying the “Stud” and performing a “down-down.”  In this latter context, a “down-down” does not refer to the ceremony.  Rather, it refers to the act of chugging the designated Harrier’s beverage of choice, while the rest of the Hash Bash sings the basic “down-down” song.  Yay.  The moral of that story is to never run in washes and creek beds during monsoon season while on a Hash Run boys and girls.  Other than being previously wounded and being humiliated (or awarded) with the “Stud” award, whichever way you look at it, I suffered no other exercises in futility as a result of that Hash House Harriers run.

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